We’re two days from the start of the Bowl Championship Series, but the following picks include a somewhat loose interpretation of the term “major.”

If the Heart of Dallas Bowl (UNLV vs. North Texas) can be played on Jan. 1 — forget the rivers turning to blood; the Heart of Dallas on New Year’s Day is truly the sign of the apocalypse — then I can count the chick-fil-A on New Year’s Eve as a major bowl.

Let’s hope these fare better than my Pac-12 picks. I’m 0-4 thus far.

All picks against the spread.Lines taken from vegasinsider.com (opening lines used)

DUKE (plus-11.5) vs. TEXAS A&M (chick-fil-A Bowl, Dec. 31): I’m a firm believer that the Blue Devils are one of the worst teams to ever win a division title in an AQ conference. Their performance in the ACC championship game did nothing to change my mind. Pick: Texas A&M.

MICHIGAN STATE (plus-1.5) vs. STANFORD (Rose Bowl, Jan. 1): As noted in my Pac-12 picks: The Pac-12 and Big Ten aren’t evenly matched, but these teams are: MSU is built to make life difficult for the Cardinal and substantially better than Stanford’s opponent in the ’13 Rose Bowl (Wisconsin). The line, which has jumped to 6.5, is moving in the wrong direction. Pick: Michigan State.

First off: I hope everyone is having a healthy and happy holiday season.

If your football team is done for the year, take heart: Signing day is a mere six weeks away, and spring practice will be here before you know it.

* The Hotline has been quite for the past week due to my schedule (personal and professional), but things will pick up going forward.

I’m in Los Angeles until Thursday covering Stanford in the Rose Bowl. The game-related stories will be available on mercurynews.com, and I’ll provide links here and on my twitter feed.

But don’t expect to see all the stories posted here in their entirety — the Hotline isn’t, and never has been, a Stanford blog.

Covering the Cardinal football team is my primary assignment for the Merc and consumes the vast majority of my time during the football season, but the Hotline is a Bay Area, Pac-12, regional and national college sports blog.

The parity that produced nine teams with at least six wins — and arguably the deepest, toughest conference in the country — was the same eat-your-own parity that 1) kept the league from generating an undefeated or 1-loss team and 2) limited the league to one team in the Bowl Championship Series.

You could make a fairly strong case that the Pac-12 would be better off with a second team in the BCS and only seven or eight bowl-eligible teams.

Oregon in the Orange/Sugar vs. Oregon State in the Hawaii and/or Arizona in the AdvoCare and/or Washington State in the New Mexico?

That’s probably a pretty good trade.

(No offense to the Beavers, Wildcats and Cougars and their dedicated fans. But the exposure, prestige and cash infusion that accompany a BCS at-large berth are enormously important.)

* Posting has been sporadic in the past week: I took a couple days off and had a 49ers-related assignment …

Action: Good, bad and hmmmmm news for Cal football.Reaction I: The good news (part I): The academic situation is improving. According to a report by the Bay Area News Group’s Katy Murphy, who covers higher education, far more recruits are meeting the UC’s statewide admissions requirements. While a higher percentage of at-risk recruits certainly increases the chances that academic progress and graduation rate scores will suffer, it does not account for all of Cal’s well-documented problems. I’m not even sure it counts for the majority of the problems, frankly. The Bears’ embarrassing GSR and APR results were also rooted in the failure of players to remain committed to school at the back end of their careers, when the NFL beckoned and the path of least resistance was to drop out of school to train for the draft. Bottom line: The GSRs never should have fallen to their current level. But credit the Bears for getting the situation rectified.

This will be brief because the focus is now on the Rose Bowl and I’m jammed up with non-Stanford assignments.

Result: Won at Arizona State 38-14

Grade: A+

Comment: Dominant road win over a ranked opponent with a title on the line — if that doesn’t deserve an A+, nothing does.

Considering the stakes and the opponent, it was the Cardinal’s best showing on the road this season by a factor of 10. As a result, Stanford is making its fourth consecutive BCS appearance, the longest active streak in the country.